


Hello, Echo

by Etnoe



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Magical Inheritance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8388481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: Enma was always the one who saw the strange things first.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sterlynsilverrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterlynsilverrose/gifts).



Mami had to look through a stone with a hole in it in order to see anything, but Enma didn't have to do much at all. He was usually the first to notice if anything was happening, and would point at the flickers in the mirror while they were brushing their teeth, or draw Mami to walk in the sunlight when the shadows under the trees looked too full - she said it was probably because of his eyes, and that little odd-looking shape in them, and Enma agreed that it was as good a theory as any.

Once his little sister had happened to find a "donut stone", as she put it, and discovered what it could do, she would always whip it out and take a look to see the things he'd seen for years and years, but even if it took a moment longer, at least she still listened to his warnings. She had teased him for never thinking of _listening_ through a donut stone, the first time he saw her doing it, but he got to tease her back the time she got the stone stuck in her ear and their father had to take her to the doctor to get it out. The music they heard this way was mostly weird to listen to and they could never make out what the voices said, as if those wispy shapes were too far away, but it was nice to have something more than visions.

Enma knew magic wasn't supposed to exist - sitting quietly near knots of classmates and friends, he'd heard enough people being teased for believing stuff like that. He had never heard any of the adults in Simon talk about stuff like this, even the superstitious ones, so it wasn't something that Mafiosi knew of but other people wouldn't. He and Mami kept it all between themselves, and it was enough.

The secret was pretty fun. It had them popular with their cousins in summertime, since they knew the lightly-trodden paths to the sweetest and ripest fruits and berries out in the fields behind the house. The dances on circles of green grass were so beautiful that sometimes, in the heights of summer, he and Mami happily sat and got sunburn through the hottest parts of the day for the dim glimpses that were visible, the scream of insects no distraction from the strange music or the glint of incredible costumes.

It was different by the time that some of the things he saw came to find him.

*

None of them had eyes like his, but they got close - the red of their irises was the same as his, the same as many members of Simon had. They looked human, and he found that he didn't trust it. Their skin should be gritty, mica-flecked - they should be taller - they should be talking all the time, and laughing, and dancing...

What he did trust, though, was that they knelt to him.

Somehow they instantly looked as if they'd grown from the ground, like weird public art installed years ago in the long grass of the field behind the Simon house. Six children his age, dressed in black ... waiting for him. Not for very long, though, because one head snapped up - a girl's face, framed with long, dark hair - and she spoke first.

"We are the knights of your kingdom."

She opened her hand, and her fingers glittered and fanned out _way more than fingers should_ into ... metal, or maybe even something diamond-edged, but it was too bright for Enma to look at in the sunshine. The others made their own motions, armour and weapons growing on or out of them.

"And we swear our fealty to you."

Behind them, there were bright patches of green in the field - small, but clustered together. Further away, he could see that the patches formed distinct lines; the closest patches were right at the feet of the six children, bright growths in dark, rich loam that wasn't quite the kind of soil in the rest of the field.

Enma looked over his shoulder at the house behind him for a long time. First in line to be the boss, he knew what it was to be an heir. He tried to make this fit into the history of his family, but it didn't make sense. All the children of Simon knew that history, from their part in the creation of one of the greatest families of the Mafia, and the centuries-old betrayal that had meant that Simon was now one of the smallest. He didn't mind, since as far as he could tell they did fine with what they got from the land they owned and the smuggling operations.

The Holy Land, Enma remembered, the nearly unfindable island where Cozart Simon had eventually gone to live with his family ... but that was the only thing that stood out as strange, and the adults tended to say, like it was funny, that the Holy Land had been magical mostly for being somewhere to live in peace.

"I don't know about any kingdom," Enma said, his voice sounding awfully soft compared to the girl's. He turned around slowly.

The weapons and armour had been removed and placed in front of the other children.

Which meant that for some of them, their _body parts_ had been removed.

"You recognise us, and you are the only one left who does," said the girl with the long hair, and now with one hand. Her eyes watered with pain, but she was still trying to keep her voice steady...

They didn't care how long he stood and glared at them. Enma wanted to freak out and just run away ... but he knew about being an heir.

"Are you going to take my sister to lead you if I say no?" he asked the bleeding girl.

"Listen to him! That's such an old-fashioned idea!" said one of them with a grin, and another one said, "We take good care of those children, you know..."

Enma took the fan that lay at his feet. Up close, he saw that the bright, glittering blade was made of ice that breathed steam into the hot air and did not melt.

He set it on the girl's shoulder and tried not to think about how close it was to her neck. This was what it looked like when a king accepted a knight, according to storybooks he'd seen. For the first time he understood that it was about danger - he could have killed her this way, instead of accepting what she said.

Instead, with the way her eyes met his, all pain and desperation, he almost let his knees give way so that he kneeled to her too. Wasn't he doing that anyway, by deciding to give in? But ... he knew what beings like this were supposed to be like, from all the things he'd seen that echoed deep inside him, and it wasn't anything close to this. He didn't know this girl at all but he didn't want her to bleed any more than he'd want a human to, or any of the rest of them.

Enma kept to his feet with all the dread that gave him strength, and took up the weapons of each of the other children. The other knights.

His knights.

*

Mami still had her donut stone.

She waved through it a lot - always a distant gesture, seen through a tiny window and yet vibrantly clear - and when he waved back, her smile was a wispy, distant, beautiful thing.


End file.
